Microsoft is walking back Windows 11's AI overload

> It appears this moment of pushback has resonated with internal teams: According to people familiar with Microsoft’s plans, the company is now reevaluating its AI strategy on Windows 11 and plans changes to streamline or even remove certain AI features where they don’t make sense.

Obviously this is a complete failure of governance. The very first thing they should have considered was whether or not these features made sense in the ways that they were being added. There should not be any necessary work to "rollback" features that do not make sense, because they should have not built them in the first place.

Even if we accept at face value that AI has made generation of code significantly cheaper, that doesn't justify the existence of worthless code. Taste comes from knowing what not to build.

Right now Windows is an unstable mess, filled with things that shouldn't have been built. The question Microsoft should ask themselves is why they built them in the first place, and how they will prevent this from happening again.

Microsoft had gained my goodwill as a linux user when they didn't immediately destroy github and embraced open source

I have since been reminded why this was always misplaced hope. I will never update to Windows 11 or purchase any of their software again.

I'm similarly not updating Mac to their first ai-hype'd OS version. I've only heard poor reviews, zero interest in their glass and hyper-rounded corners

Too late, idiots. Just as Windows 10 was being retired, you ran the craziest anti-marketing campaign I've ever seen and successfully coaxed me into switching my daily driver to Linux. Until this year, I've been using windows my ENTIRE life.

Microsoft needs to double down on its ubiquitous AI initiative so that more users can discover the joy of Linux.

The real issue was never AI in Windows It was AI with no clear user benefit. A Copilot button in Notepad doesn't solve a problem anyone has Good to see them pulling back, but the test will be whether the features they keep actually earn their place in the workflow instead of just being there because someone had a KPI to hit

I can’t believe I’m going to type this, but I miss the Ballmer days. Current leadership has somehow made this company even worse.

They'll pretend to care and change a few things for 6 months, but they'll just keep doing it. /shrug

As a side topic, I wish we still had something like Windows 3.1/95/98, that has a touch of personal usage (focuses on multimedia/gaming instead of business/server).

Do you still remember Microsoft Home? My first Windows gaming experience, other than Minesweeper and Solitaire ofc, was the Fury3 demo, which contains only one level from the licensed game, on a Windows 95 Home Entertainment CD. There were also Encarta and other Home products that never took off. The only problem is frequent BSOD, which was solved by the NT kernel, so I guess XP was the pinnacle of personal computing OS, although it does fail some DOS and earlier Windows games.

Do we still have a compatible OS nowadays? Linux is mostly for server and business, and while it has gained some popularity as a desktop OS, it definitely still have a long way to reach the intimacy that early Windows offered, and I doubt it will ever regress back to a "Home computer OS". But maybe we can build on top of that. I mean we can build software on top of Linux that provides the friendly vibe.

Remove copilot buttons from (new) Windows laptops and we'll talk.

Too little, too late, and too specific in scope. Windows 11 is awful not merely because of the AI bullshit being shoehorned into everything, everywhere (CoPilot in Notepad? In Paint? Are you serious, Microsoft?!), but also because of all the other completely unnecessary changes made to the OS. A curated selection of real-world examples from my recent gig making a hardened Windows 11 image for a physical product line:

* Kiosk Mode via the shell launcher delays logon times from <5s to 30-180s - just by turning it on, even if it doesn’t actually enable kiosk mode!

* Local changes via registry keys don’t “stick” consistently, even when the machine is entirely offline

* Offline activations using hardware keys fail across vendors without anyone knowing why (other than Microsoft, for the cost of a support call)

* Existing Windows 10 powercfg scripts and config files do not work with Win11. Our workaround was manually calling the exact same command twice, back-to-back, to force-apply a change.

* Installing language packs via the command line by any means available (Powershell’s add-windowscapability, DISM’s package installer, lpksetup, etc) do not actually populate the GUI with those packs as an option until we reinstall them from the GUI again.

* Adverts are everywhere, even on IoT LTSC Enterprise

Honestly, Microsoft completely lost the plot as to what an operating system is supposed to do in favor of turning it into an advertising and user surveillance machine masquerading as a useful OS.

I hate it.

I never thought I would have to give up Notepad on Windows for quick file edits. But now with AI in notepad, paint, snap tool, etc, I had to install and use third party alternatives all the time.

Too be honest, thres is too much wrong with win 11 to save it at this point.

Is not only AI bullshit in my notepad.

The excess adds, intrusive online stuff, terriblee performance for basic tasks like the File Explorer or even opening a menu.

Making everything a damn web page...

One clear example is outlook. Talk wathever you want, outlook, is the indistry standart for e-mail. And while not perfect it was very usefull. Then they keep pushing the new interface on everybody throats. The new interface takes like 1 gb of RAM when in use, agaisnt 200mb of the traditional one, while offering less options. Why would anyone who really cares about e-mail use that shit? People who just casually use e-mails dont use Outlook, they use the webmail.

They choose to ignore the users, and push top down changes into them. But the market dont really works this way for most people. Not every tech company needs to be like Apple.

For people who work in very classified/secure environments (designing weapons systems, rev eng UFO's, etc...) does M$ offer some version of windows without all of the AI crap and bloat?

The thing that bothers me the most about this is that I actually have faith in the people actually developing Windows. I'm not at all aurprised that they are rebelling against stupid non-features. But that rebelling doesn't amount to anything, since managers and decrees from the top funnel all effort into the most user-hostile results possible.

If MS rehires their QA teams and listen to the people on the ground, I'd imagine the very same devs who put AI in Notepad would be very happy to give us features we actually want.

AI feels like the ultimate “a solution in search of a problem.”

Forms of it are very powerful and have a lot of uses for sure. But there seems to be an enormous amount of top-down “figure out how to fit AI into our product/processes” for both producers and consumers.

I understand the approach Satya took initially. He had a big investment in AI. He saw a theoretical value in AI supporting productivity. And he pushed his developers and creators to imagine and mock up ideas how AI would deliver.

Obviously the last part was disappointing. In hindsight, the push was far too aggressive, and too mediocre. We have a lot to learn from this try, about ourselves and about others.

Integration 2.0 will be or needs to be a bit more skewed towards low hanging fruits. I want a copilot for the help menu, and for the 1000 commands not in the toolbar, and a copilot enhancement to the search bar (which came from google!). And a natural language interface to bring up templates, open files, and look for images. Apple could have done this AI enhancement with settings, and added a start button to open apps.

As for "privacy", that is the first scream that comes out from people who have never touched the product. Assurety should have been made that all data would be local. This runs contrary to the "data is the new oil" direction, but it would have been a good way to entice the skeptics and eventually swallow them whole to give up their privacy (insert evil laugh here).

I doubt the higher ups in MS even use windows, they probably have MacBooks.

This entire thing seems very iffy. Not much in the way of concrete info, a lot of speculation, and I seriously doubt that MS will suddenly switch directions. It's just being modified/refactored into smaller suppositories over time rather than the large infrequent ones they seem to have used.

In the end is hardto see why they banked so heavy into it. When open AI started t o make promisses and everybody saw what it could do, Microsoft invested heavily on it, seeing some of the largest increase in its shares, and in consequence on big fat bonus for its executives.

NOw that the hype is naturally going down, and people are encountering limitations in what modern AI can do, and having more realistic expectations, Microsoft hype train stoped in middle of the hill climb.

They pretty much exchanged gradual increases in revenue for a quick but ultimally short term profit.

They need a more fundamental mind shift frankly.

It’s not an AI problem but rather a ram stuff down users throat even when they clearly don’t want it problem.

See broken start menu that does a web search instead showing your apps. See forced online install. See one drive everywhere.

Toning down the AI a bit won’t be enough

Trying to bake AI into the OS was so dumb. Make the OS super agent friendly, surface as much data as possible in agent accessible way, and perhaps create a journalling config management system so agent actions can be rolled back. Then sit back and let people build cool shit on your base and let people market your product for you.

So Copilot in Office is the new "Hall of Tortured Souls"?

It's the same geniuses that come up with the worst product names possible. Like they came up with a really good product name and inverted the value to use the opposite.

The problem is that the engineers and coders that ran microsoft are no longer doing so. Their leadership is too disconnected.

It's the same recipe of enshittification you see all over, marketing, sales take over along with consultants and MBA's. Except, I think in Microsoft's case there are still enough people who know about the technology to be dangerous, they're not entirely clueless, they just know enough (like about AI in this case) to be dangerous.

Regardless of the sentiment on HN and elsewhere though, even excluding enterprise usage, I doubt windows' marketshare will suffer more than 10% YoY.

After relentless pressure from Microsoft finally switched to Linux. I won't say it is smooth sail - but it respects your time and PC resources. Which Windows does not. Windows has had abhorrently slow Explorer, File Search and almost any end user interaction for couple of years now. And is so full of crap that can't be disabled or even don't know what it is doing.

At this point I dont trust common sense in anybody inside Microsoft.

They are doing dumb shit for about 5 years now, and killing MS Office, a brand thats market leader for more than 30 years prooves that anybody who had conservative opinion on how software should be built have already abandoned the ship or was kicked out of it.

Now is being run by "visionary" marketing people, and the only way left is down.

Recall is a bloated waste of time that completely misses the point. Why not instead let me snapshot a set of apps and docs/projects that are open, then snapshot a different set of apps and what’s open, and let me flip between the two (or three or four)? This way I could sort out my setup for home versus work, or between multiple clients/customers, and be able to quickly jump between common layouts/apps depending on context. But to be honest, this is probably beyond what Windows APIs are capable of, since Windows can’t even remember what directories I was working in across apps.

I’m not sure why I need to know the history of screenshots that is Recall. Maybe this was simply the best they could do?

That said, Windows 11 is such an AI-fueled privacy dumpster fire that it’s getting replaced by Linux on my gaming PC this month. Then I’m only stuck on Windows for work, and even then I can still write code on Mac or Linux.

Good, maybe Microsoft will start investing to solve real problems and develop better products.

Microsoft have been de-investing in its own companies to put more money into AI. Yes, they have made cuts on highly profitable business to burn money on AI. I hope that they reverse before they fire everyone that was able to build useful software.

This is absurd, the fact that Windows has 70% if global desktop operating system market share makes them their most important moat, why are they deliberately taking actions and steps to make it worse? They added ads, forced updates, mandatory Microsoft account activation, so much unwanted AI slop... Think about it, if it was another more competitive company, they would be charging for the AI service and the onboarding experience would be totally different. It seems like the management is totally disconnected from their product.

It's a shame, I was dreaming of getting a chat-based operating system.

(sarcasm)

I'm hopeful but will wait and see just how much they change. If they remove Copilot from Notepad, I think that would be a reasonable indicator.

What's concerning isn't that they pushed AI and then walked it back.

What's concerning is that they lack judgment and proper insight into why pushing it in the first place was a bad idea.

If your OS truly is a product, users should not be beta-testers. This isn't an indie kickstarter game.

Please, delete all AI from my Windows

I don't like this. Bad user experience with AI and general enshitification of Windows was the push that many people needed to at least try Linux, and for companies to take Linux a bit more serious as the desktop platform.

We, customers who were annoyed by these AI "improvements", knew we'd eventually get here. We hated these features from the get to.

Now I'm curious: will the executives, paid millions because they are visionaries well ahead mere mortals like us, be fired for this pathetically stupid strategic push?

Too little, too late.

Is it just me that sees "Windows Recall" and thinks "Total Recall -> Arnold Schwarzenegger -> Terminator"?

Not surprised it took so long, the decision makers seems to be quite out of touch with the user base.

Which makes me believe that their "walk back" is just to change the packaging of the same old "slop" being shoved down their customers throats.

I will believe it when I see it. I have been feeling really helpless and hopeless recently about Windows. So hopefully this news turns into something real.

AI overload? It's called "a complete shitshow".

microsoft saw global enshittification and thought enshittifying enshittification would be a valid strategy to one-up their competition

Was this push for AI in Microsofts products just to get user number to go up, so investors don't pull out of the AI bubble?

Can we walk back on whatever is causing my 3060 computer to work slower than my windows computer from the 1990s? Or my phone?

I'll believe it when I see it. Windows many problems are the results of five years of terrible strategy and not caring about if users actually like your platform. It will require sustained effort over a long period to fix.

Even if we accept at face value that AI has made generation of code significantly cheaper, that doesn't justify the existence of worthless code. Taste comes from knowing what not to build.

> The question Microsoft should ask themselves is why they built them in the first place

It seems like everyone except MS themselves knows why: they got tunnel vision from Azure and AI, and completely forgot about what actually made them successful.

Hell they even burnt down one of the most famous brands in the world, MS Office, for zero reason other than to try and whitewash their Copilot name. The marketing guys who made that decision urgently need to find another line of work, because literally a Labrador licking his balls all day would have resulted in a better outcome.

The PMs are completely asleep at the wheel, when they aren't actively self-sabotaging.

It seems like a failure in vision from leadership rather than a failure in governance. My understanding is that the company was told from the very top to put AI everywhere and that's exactly what they did.

The pain of ripping this all out properly is likely too high. Ever since they got the delicious taste of white-labelling chromium instead of fixing ie, another way has been looking better and better: windows 13 or 14 will just be a linux distro

>Taste comes from knowing what not to build.

Jobs was correct when he said that Microsoft has no taste.

A failure of governance if your goal is to have the best possible OS, and you have one person in charge who would rather not ship something than ship detrimental features, but that's not really how companies today work.

If instead we look at all of this as a company that doesn't really care about the overall product that much, and wants a chance of growth, then it all makes sense: Every team/owner decides that they want to ship AI in whatever bit of the OS they control, as it's a chance for relevancy with minimal downside. Then their boss realizes that they don't want to say no to anyone, and in fact might have the winning lottery ticket if more AI features are tried under them, and then you end up with the kind of disaster you see.

This isn't Microsoft specific at all: I bet many of us have seen this elsewhere, and even in different cycles. Everything is turned into a website whether it needed it or not, and then rewritten into a single page, because it was going to be revolutionary. Five different blockchain teams inventing use cases, including one spending a hundred million a year trying to make NFT videogames happen, and every project failed. This is the current governance standard in a megacorp.

People will only bother about the unstable mess when the risk is balanced, and they have as much to lose for ending up with an unstable mess as they have to win for risking instability for a half baked feature. Because I bet that, just like everywhere else, some people get promotions and large amounts of stock compensation for shipping a product before it proves to be good, so one can even be lavishly rewarded for failing.

So from where I stand, all of this is just Microsoft showing that they are just like everyone else. Given how fast the world moves, the governance you describe is rarer every year. So rare that even though I share your instincts, I am not even sure what "right" might be.

QA? Hardly even know 'er! Windows 11 makes Windows Vista look polished and competent.

They're not even trying anymore.

> Even if we accept at face value that AI has made generation of code significantly cheaper, that doesn't justify the existence of worthless code.

It does, imagine how much faster it's going to be in the next model version!

I think Windows 11 is the Trump moment. Even if they right the ship, Linux is good enough or good enough is on the near horizon for most use cases so people are jumping ship. There's also bleed from people being tired of Apple's lack of software innovation.

Everyone was just following the boss (Satya)

> because they should have not built them in the first place

At least some team at MS probably wanted to see what kind of data about and from their user base they could squeeze out with those features in those places.

No matter how much value this company has brought the people, the main goal at some point became extraction of data. They rolled those features out just when AI tools began to hit the same wall: no more data this way; I guess not even more noise.

Microsoft had gained my goodwill as a linux user when they didn't immediately destroy github and embraced open source

I have since been reminded why this was always misplaced hope. I will never update to Windows 11 or purchase any of their software again.

I'm similarly not updating Mac to their first ai-hype'd OS version. I've only heard poor reviews, zero interest in their glass and hyper-rounded corners

* Kiosk Mode via the shell launcher delays logon times from <5s to 30-180s - just by turning it on, even if it doesn’t actually enable kiosk mode!

* Local changes via registry keys don’t “stick” consistently, even when the machine is entirely offline

* Offline activations using hardware keys fail across vendors without anyone knowing why (other than Microsoft, for the cost of a support call)

* Existing Windows 10 powercfg scripts and config files do not work with Win11. Our workaround was manually calling the exact same command twice, back-to-back, to force-apply a change.

* Adverts are everywhere, even on IoT LTSC Enterprise

Honestly, Microsoft completely lost the plot as to what an operating system is supposed to do in favor of turning it into an advertising and user surveillance machine masquerading as a useful OS.

I hate it.

Besides the general awfulness of Windows that you describe, have you looked at C:\Windows recently? It is an unorganised mess with multiple different case styling all over the place. I get this is not that important but I can't help feel it illustrates just how little care is taken behind the scenes. The whole thing seems like a nightmare to deal with.

I had a fresh install of Windows on a new computer which refused to install updates until I ran a bunch of commands in the "terminal". The whole thing is beyond fixing at this point.

It's like this _offline_ OS is now somehow doing things in async mode and sometimes they just don't work. That's how it feels.